it's a long one so i'll provide a TL;DR
TL;DR
while excel's deafult heavy style worked well vs case's aggression and bravery,
they were unable to stay focused and lost due to several bad individual
performances and many questionable decisions. against vitality the team just
seemed disconnected, rarely playing well off of each other leading to their failure
and early exit from the tournament.
they have a lot to work on if they wanna be a T1 team
In a suprising turn of events Excel is the first team to go out of the VRL finals.
Now they came in as the winners of VRL north and probably as one of the
best teams on paper, so how and why did they go out as the first team?
case vs Excel
this game first took us to ascent - Case's map pick. while Case's very agressive and reliant-on-duels style
is flashy, it was clear that XL was prepared for this map. they knew exactly how to contain their opponents
aggression, they were very passive on defence sticking together, trading and playing off of each other.
just good valorant, not much here to highlight.
as Haven rolled around, things were looking great with an 8-4 attacking half, and although wolfen started
popping off and got some mad kills - Excel handled it well. defence is where the trouble began tho'
Here first thing they failed to do was adapt.
almost every single round Case had full A lobby control by just putting wolfen there and if XL ever
peeked him, they did it 1 by 1. Alive struggling to win fights on jett across the whole map didn't help
and ultimately Case pull off the comeback and win 13-10.
well gg go next.
Icebox started off well as excel took a 5-1 lead on attack but then it all crumbled and the half ended
6-6. and since icebox is an attacker sided map case took the game with a pretty comfy 13-8 scoreline
with XL looking very uninspiring.
On this map Moe and Foxie were basically non-existent, while foxie as an IGL can be excused, Moe's
performance in this series should be unacceptable as it quite possibly lost them the game. Alive also
seemed a little out of place sometimes.
notice how i said nothing about patitek and chiwawa? well it's because these two been stellar on all
3 maps and played very well. no issues there.
Excel vs Vitality
Haven (Excel's pick) was full of weird solo plays and crazy chaotic rounds. Excel seemed to have
never had any control over the game during this map and ultimately lost 10-13.
some moments worth noting are: Moe on the sova solo holding A long or Patitek dying 20 seconds
into the round bc of pushing short as a Breach (wich also led to an unsuccesful retake later, as they
had basically no util for it). it felt like there was a general disconnect between the players during this
map, often not playing off of each other and the util provided - but Vitality liked to return the favor and
throw some rounds of their own.
Ascent was next and XL definitely had a chance after their good performance vs Case 2 days ago.
after a close game they however go out of the tourney losing 12-14 on their opponents map pick.
Here we saw a repeat of their issues from map one as the solo peeks and weird decisions continued.
Notably Chiwawa pushing a smoke in a 5v4 as Vitality was executing onto the site. Also their A postplants
were horrendous for some reason, leading to them losing i think 2 anti-eco rounds, correct me if i'm wrong.
my biggest conclusion from this map however is that chiwawa on sage is a bad fit.
individual player thoughts
Patitek and Chiwawa: one summary for both of those - they still got it. Chiwawa shouldn't play sage tho'
Alive: please take him off the jett, the amount of times he dashes forward on accident alone is awfully huge
for a player at this level and enough of a reason to move him onto a chamber or raze/neon
Foxie: Foxie has been playing well but also didn't shine too much during this tourney, hoped to see more from him.
Moe40: not sure if he should have a place on the roster tbh. he was horrible. definitely didn't bring in too much individually and his util usage wasn't anything special.
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